Nuez Café is the kind of Valencia café that operates without spectacle — a compact room in Ruzafa with bare plaster walls, a short counter, a few wooden tables, and the particular quality of quiet that comes from a neighbourhood café before the lunchtime shift. The coffee is specialty-roasted and made with care; the breakfast runs to pastries from a local bakery rather than the industrial croissants of the neighbourhood's faster establishments. The name means walnut, and the interior has the same quality — something unassuming that rewards attention. Ruzafa in the early morning, before the district's commercial life fully begins, is the most interesting version of the neighbourhood; Nuez is where that hour is best spent.
Ruzafa, Valencia, Spain